


come on, light the candle in this poor heart of mine

by honey_wheeler



Category: The Office (US) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone thinks it's John. She has to admit, it makes her laugh to think how much it would ruin everyone’s script if they knew she would choose Roy over Jim in a heartbeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come on, light the candle in this poor heart of mine

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime during the filming of season 4, post Roy's firing on the show and Jenna's separation in real life.

Everyone thinks it's John. Jenna checks online sometimes, to see what people are saying. She's not sure if it's because she's feeling lonely and needs validation, or if it's because she's feeling guilty and needs punishment.

The tone was sad at first. Everyone liked her and James together ( _I did too,_ she wants to tell them, but then how to explain the divorce, which is far too complicated to break down for a bunch of faceless strangers online), they were so cute, it's so sad, poor Jenna! Then stuff about her and John started popping up, how _they_ were so cute together, how they had so much chemistry, wouldn't they be hot together, oh my god, whatever, et cetera.

She has to admit, it makes her laugh to think how much it would ruin everyone’s script if they knew she would choose Roy over Jim in a heartbeat.

*****

“All right, everyone, let’s go again,” the AD calls. Jenna sighs and rolls her neck. Today is _not_ one of those it-doesn’t-even-feel-like-work days.

“God, this is boring.” Mindy abandons her post at the copier and leans her hip against Jenna’s desk. Well, it’s Pam’s desk, really. But days like today make the distinction a little blurry. “You’d think John could manage to be a professional and not laugh for one freakin’ take.”

“Have they cracked twenty yet?”

“Uh, yeah, like twenty takes ago,” Mindy scoffs. “Keep up, J-Fisch.” Jenna makes a face.

“Didn’t we agree that J-Fisch was never going to catch on?”

“Whatever.” Mindy flicks her fingers like there’s a fly pestering her. “Please tell me you have good gossip or that you’re doing something interesting because I’m about to pull my hair out.”

“Is vanity trolling online something you consider interesting?”

“Depends on what you’re turning up. Anything scandalous about you sweeping the internet?”

“’Fraid not.” She gestures to the screen she’s looking at. “Just some very un-scandalous pictures.” Mindy leans over her shoulder to look and together they click through pictures they’ve both seen a hundred times. Angela and Paul, BJ looking drunk, Ben Affleck whispering sweet nothings in John’s ear.

“Oh, David and Rashida!” Mindy squeals. “I remember that picture. How cute are they? She’s so tiny I can’t even stand it.”

Jenna smiles. David really does tower over Rashida. Jenna can’t help comparing her height to Rashida’s, wondering if she’d look that tiny next to him. It’s not like James wasn’t taller than her. He was. He was fine. Just not as tall as David. Not as big as David. Why that makes her sad, she has no idea.

“He’s way hotter with a beard,” Mindy decides as she turns back to face Jenna. “Hey, why the long face, Flicka?” She nudges Jenna’s shoulder, shoots her the patented Mindy Kaling you-know-you-want-to-spill-your-guts look. Jenna shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she says. “Let’s go raid craft services.”

*****

David comes to every premiere she has, every after-party she suffers through, every event she’s even remotely involved with. He comes and he brings his tiny, adorable wife and he gives her these big, encompassing bear hugs that surround her and make her feel as if she’s wearing him like a coat. He hugs her way longer than anyone else ever does but it’s still not long enough.

Her feet are killing her. She’s not supposed to wear heels very much anymore, but they look so much better in pictures, which her oh so kind and supportive coworkers have made very clear. The one time she wore flats to a premiere, BJ called her Stumpy for three days. She shifts from foot to foot, wishing that James were there to lean on. Literally. But maybe metaphorically too.

“You look like you need a drink.” She turns to see David, holding out a glass beaded with perspiration. He’s here on his own tonight, out to support Jenna while his wife stays home. Jenna is way more aware of that than she’s comfortable considering.

“Thanks.” She accepts it and takes a sip. A sidecar, her favorite. Mindy always calls it a grandpa drink, but Jenna likes how old-fashioned it is. “I hate these things,” she says, gesturing to the party. It’s full of agents and aspiring starlets, people schmoozing and networking and exuding a vague air of desperation. It’s depressing. Before he can reply, her manager arrives to whisk her away. Some big deal producer wants to talk to her.

“God, save me,” she mutters to David under her breath.

“Duty calls,” he says, raising his glass in mock salute. Her manager seizes her by the elbow and propels her into the fray. She looks pleadingly over her shoulder at David until she can’t see him anymore through the crowd.

*****

After about an hour, her fight or flight response kicks in and she seeks refuge on a terrace in the back. It’s a cold night for L.A. and she has the terrace to herself, everyone else opting for the warmer climes of the indoors. The door is propped open behind her. She can hear the sound of people talking, the thump of the music. She props her elbows on the cold railing and watches red and white lights swarm in opposing streams along the freeway in the distance. A commotion sounds from the hallway, a chorus of thumps and scrapes and curses, and she turns her head to see him there. A stealth approach it’s not.

“I have found you!” David exclaims as he surges through the door, this time holding an almost empty beer. He pauses to drain the last of it and sets it carefully on the ground outside the door.

“You have indeed,” she answers. He moves towards her, walking like his head is in the lead and his feet are just trying to keep up. When he reaches her, he collapses against the railing beside her, practically knocking her over. He laughs, grapples at her ineffectually trying to keep her upright. The creak of the railing under his weight is distinctly unreassuring.

“Wow, how much did you drink?” she asks. He shrugs, makes a see-saw gesture with his hand.

“A bit,” he tells her, grinning foolishly and leaning in towards her until he looks like he might tip right in to her. It must have been more than a bit. He’s no lightweight.

“You don’t look like you tonight,” he says, his expression becoming serious.

“I don’t feel like me tonight,” she answers honestly.

“Is that because of James?” he asks. She’s silent for a while.

“Maybe a little,” she answers finally.

“Well, I like you,” he says. “I wish you would come back.” She can’t help smiling at that.

“This conversation sounds ridiculous, you realize.”

“That’s okay ‘cause I’m drunk. It’s like a license to be ridiculous.” He trails his knuckles up and down her bare arm. It gives her goosebumps.

“Okay, then.” She tries to ignore how her voice sounds wispy, insubstantial. She can’t tell if it’s because she wants to cry or because she wants to throw herself at him. Maybe both.

“I really do, though. Wish you’d come back.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Yeah, but you’re sad,” he insists. “I don’t like it when you’re sad. It makes _me_ sad and I don’t like to be sad. It doesn’t suit me.”

“You’re right,” she laughs. “It doesn’t.”

“I miss you, Jenna.”

“Yeah,” she says, threading her arm through his and hugging it to her chest. “I miss you, too.”

“How come we don’t work together anymore?” he asks her. His voice is plaintive, like he’s a little boy.

“Because life’s not fair,” she says. “Groups emails aren’t as much fun when they’re just me and Rainn. Plus then it’s not a group email anymore.”

“Right,” he says with an exaggerated nod. “Then it’s just an email email.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll email from home and you can pretend I still work there,” he offers. “How about that? We can both pretend that.”

“Deal,” she says with a grin. She sticks out her hand and he grabs it in his own, pumping it so vigorously it makes her totter on her high heels.

“You know something?” he says, long after she’s regained her balance and they’ve stood in silence, listening to muted sound of the traffic nearby.

“Hmm?”

“If I weren’t already married I’d choose you, Jen.” She keeps staring at the tops of the palm trees across the street. It could just be that she heard something she wanted to hear instead of what he really said. She does that sometimes, like when she was eight and she thought her mother said they were going to Disneyland instead of to Toledo to visit her grandparents for the summer, or when she was convinced that she was getting a pony for Christmas and instead she got an E-Z Bake Oven and a Nancy Drew book she already had. He sways into her and she chances a look up. He looks like someone who just said he would choose her. She lets out the breath she was holding.

“I mean it, I really would,” he tells her. His face is so earnest, like he might cry if she doesn’t believe him. “I really would,” he repeats. She does believe him, is the thing. Funny how that doesn’t make her feel better.

“Aw, Jenna, you look so sad.” He reaches out and touches her cheek, the entire side of her face covered by his massive paw, before pulling her into a rib-crushing hug. “It’s okay Jenny Jen, don’t be sad.”

Her face is pressed into his shirt. It smells clean and woodsy, like he lives in a cabin and splits his own firewood or something. His arms are practically wrapped around her head, her own arms snaked around his rib cage below, hands barely reaching around. James always did this split-the-difference hug, where they each had an arm up and an arm down. She kind of wanted him to hug her like this but she never told him so.

David loosens his arms. She expects he’s going to let her go, that he’ll step back and wipe his hands awkwardly on his pants and retreat inside. Instead he slides his hands to her shoulders, bumps his head against hers like her cat does when he’s affectionate. The tip of his nose skates up her cheek. It makes her shiver, but not as much as when his lips brush the corner of her mouth and settle on hers.

It’s funny how different it is when you’re not doing it for cameras or because it says _”they kiss”_ in the script. She’s probably kissed him a hundred times before, in rehearsals, in different takes. Some days she kissed him more than she kissed her own husband. But now he holds her face carefully in his big hands, opens his mouth over hers. Now is the first time it’s real and it’s different. Better. She can taste beer on his tongue. He’s a little sloppy, but it’s nice. She could use a little sloppy. She fists her hands in his lapels and kisses him back.

“David…” she whispers when they break apart, their breathing audible over the traffic, over the party down the hall, over the sound of her heart in her ears. But she doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t what she _could_ say that could possibly be the right thing. She’s saved from even trying when he sways alarmingly towards her, as if that last drink just hit him with a vengeance.

“Whoa,” she says, steadying him with an arm around his waist. Gone is the careful air, his touch isn’t gentle on her face anymore; instead his arm rests on her shoulders like a ton of bricks and he’s leaning on her so hard she can barely stand. His expression is blank, genial. He won’t remember a thing tomorrow. It’s just as well. “Let’s get you home.” _Let’s get you home to your wife._

She steers him back inside, through the dim hallway towards the still-loud party. He doesn’t bother walking straight. His weight bears them into the walls more than once. She’s probably going to have some bruises come morning. _Not wearing short sleeves for a while,_ she thinks. She pauses at the end of the hallway. The lapels of his shirt are rucked up, his hair is wild.

“Hang on,” she says. He obediently stops moving and lets her smooth his shirt. There are smudges of her lipstick on his mouth. She wipes them off with her thumb.

“There we go,” she says. He grins at her and she tries to smile back.

“You’re so good to me, Jenny Jen,” he says.

“Just returning the favor,” she tells him and leads him back into the party.

 

  
_title from “This Flight Tonight” by Joni Mitchell_   



End file.
